Tarik Skubal trade grades for Dodgers, Tigers blockbuster

The 2026 MLB trade deadline has long been expected to be a crazy one because of the surplus of buyers and lack of teams interested in selling. Arguably the best pitcher in baseball, Tarik Skubal, had also been viewed as a trade candidate, though. The starter would make all 30 teams around the league better, so tons of teams were reported to have rumored interest. Despite that, the Detroit Tigers traded their ace before deadline day even came to be. Even crazier, Skubal was traded to the team that has won the World Series two seasons in a row: the Los Angeles Dodgers.

The fact that the rich got richer was shocking for baseball fans. In return for the lefty, Detroit netted three prospects, as Zyhir Hope, River Ryan, and Brady Smith are headed to the Tigers. This trade has already been called a fleece that greatly favors the defending champions, but is that true? Here are the Tigers and Dodgers trade grades for the Skubal blockbuster.

Los Angeles Dodgers look unbeatable

In recent years, the Dodgers have gotten whichever star player they’ve wanted. The team has signed Shohei Ohtani, Teoscar Hernandez, Blake Snell, Kyle Tucker, Edwin Diaz, Tanner Scott, Roki Sasaki, and Yoshinobu Yamamoto over just the last couple of years while forming what appears to be a dynasty.

Of course, the team has long had other stars on the roster, too, including Will Smith, Max Muncy, Freddie Freeman, and Mookie Betts. While Betts was acquired in a huge 2020 trade, the Dodgers, for the most part, have been built through free agency. While they’ve been active at recent trade deadlines, they haven’t made too many blockbuster trades.

Despite the Dodgers’ recent successes, they somehow still have a stacked farm system, too, and they were viewed as the frontrunners to land Skubal heading into the final days before the trade deadline. The back-to-back American League Cy Young winner may be a free agent at season’s end, but he has proven that he is the best hurler in the sport in recent years, and his addition drastically increases Los Angeles’ odds of becoming just the fifth team ever to three-peat as champions.

The former Triple Crown winner has a 2.79 ERA, which is a statistic he led the AL in each of the past two seasons. The two-time All-Star has it all. The southpaw throws gas that can touch triple digits; he has unhittable off-speed stuff, and his command is excellent. Now, he joins a starting rotation that already includes Yamamoto, Ohtani, Sasaki, Snell, Tyler Glasnow, and Emmet Sheehan.

At full strength, that was arguably the deepest rotation in baseball even before Skubal was added. The good news is, there is no such thing as too many arms in MLB. Furthermore, a pitching group that should be a strength became an area that Los Angeles needed to reinforce recently. Snell and Glasnow are former All-Stars, and the former has won two Cy Young awards, the same as Skubal. However, they are both currently on the 60-Day Injured List.

Ohtani’s prowess as a two-way player makes it clear that he is a generational talent, but injury issues have often kept him off the bump and limited to offensive duties. Bicep and knee issues make that the case as of now. Even Sasaki, who entered the league as one of the top prospects in baseball, ended up working as a reliever in the Dodgers’ World Series run last year.

When/if the Dodgers have everyone healthy, they will have a rotation and a bullpen arguably more stacked than any MLB team to come before them. For now, though, they needed reinforcements, and adding the best pitcher in baseball certainly brings that. They managed to add Skubal without depleting their farm system, too, but more on that in a second.

Trade grade: A

What were the Detroit Tigers thinking?

For much of the season, the Tigers were involved in a “will they, won’t they” trade Skubal dilemma. Ultimately, it had become evident in the days leading up to the trade deadline that the team’s best player would, in fact, get moved. The Tigers were not going to pay Skubal what he deserved, and therefore, they were at risk of losing him for nothing come the offseason.

With the Tigers falling further out of the postseason picture in recent days, nobody blamed the team for deciding it was time to move their ace. What was questionable was the trade package the team got back in return. All of Hope, Ryan, and Smith are solid prospects, but a package featuring those three is a far cry from the haul the team was expected to get.

Hope was the lone top-100 prospect involved in this deal, but even he was ranked just fifth in Los Angeles’ system, according to MLB.com. Hope does have star potential, and he and Detroit’s top prospect, Max Clark, could hold down the Tigers’ outfield for years to come. Even so, it is disappointing that the Tigers didn’t land any of Josue De Paula, Mike Sirota, Eduardo Quintero, or Emil Morales, all of whom, like Hope, were ranked as top 25 prospects in all of baseball. Hope was just the fourth-ranked outfielder among Dodgers’ minor leaguers.

Even recent prospects-turned-major leaguers, such as Sasaki and Sheehan, had been rumored as trade candidates, but the Dodgers managed to hold onto all of them. Ryan and Smith were ranked seventh and 17th, respectively, in Los Angeles’ farm system. Again, both players have potential, but they are also flawed, and both are dealing with recent Tommy John surgeries.

Making a deal with the Dodgers is like making a deal with the devil. Winning the World Series is never a guarantee, but if anything were to assure another championship for the back-to-back champions, it would be adding one of the best players in MLB. If a team does trade with the Dodgers, though, they simply need to return an unfathomably large trade package, and the Tigers didn’t get that. If anything, the team should have waited until deadline day or made a deal with one of the other suitors, considering the lackluster trade package they received.

Trade grade: D

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